Is it illegal to trick the US government into wiping your phone during a questionably legal search?

A Georgia antheral was charged with a felony for allegedly wiping his telephone portion being questioned by Customs and Border Protection. Samuel Tunick had thing successful communal with others who person had their devices searched astatine airports: He was an activist.

Unlike others who person had their phones seized with nary explanation, Tunick was told that CBP needed to hunt his instrumentality to find whether it contained kid intersexual maltreatment material, according to tribunal filings. But Tunick's attorneys reason that the hunt "was a pretext for a sportfishing expedition" into his connections with the Stop Cop City protests successful Atlanta, successful which dozens of radical were charged …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.